Knowing Every Species: The German Zoological Society's Century-Long Quest
Prof. Dr. Michael Ohl (Museum für Naturkunde, Berlin)
Thursday, September 11th, 17:35 hrs, Lecturehall 2
At the first annual meeting of the German Zoological Society (DZG) in Leipzig in 1891, a group of founding members proposed two major initiatives for the newly established organization. They advocated for the formation of a commission to develop binding rules of zoological nomenclature and for the compilation of a Species Animalium Recentium—a comprehensive directory of all known animal species on Earth. While the DZG soon became a key platform for the discussion of emerging biological theories and concepts, these two projects remained central to its early activities for many years. In 1894, following the commission's recommendations, the DZG published the first German-language Rules for the Scientific Naming of Animals.
The Species Animalium Recentium project, however, proved far more ambitious and complex. Beginning in 1896, it took shape through the long-running publication series Das Tierreich (The Animal Kingdom), which continued for more than a century. In 1929, Richard Hesse, then editor of the series, published an estimate of the total number of animal species believed to exist worldwide. He concluded that completing an inventory of all species within the animal kingdom would require several centuries.
Hesse's calculation formed part of a broader tradition—dating back to the 18th century—of attempting to quantify the scale of nature and the challenges involved in compiling a complete "catalog of life." In recent decades, the idea of documenting all species on Earth has again gained scientific relevance and urgency.
